Honourable Jester

D&D 5e Character Concept: A Very Orderly Occultist

Okay. So I really like horror-adjacent characters? I enjoy the horror end of D&D creatures and powers and entities. And I like them specifically in the context of D&D, because while I definitely enjoy actual dedicated horror games as well, I also enjoy horror-meets-pulp-fantasy wherein we have horrifying monsters but also really cool powers and abilities.

So I’ve been doodling for a while around the idea of a Call of Cthulhu style occultist in D&D 5e. Someone specifically interested in aberrations, the Far Realms, oblexes, nightwalkers, allips, all the really cool cosmic horror style D&D monsters and realms, but not from a ‘cultist of Hadar’ perspective, but from a heroic occultist type perspective like you get in CoC. I’ve doodled around with Fey Wanderer Rangers (and Knowledge Cleric/Fey Wanderer Ranger multiclasses), and also with cowardly Abjuration Wizards afflicted with allip-induced dark knowledge via eldritch tomes. Because allips are one of the coolest D&D monsters ever, and designed to plug directly into my interests.

But I’ve never gone for a warlock, despite the Great Old One warlock being very directly designed around this exact archetype. And the reason I’ve never gone GOOlock for it is because they do sort of skew more towards the ‘cultist’ than ‘occultist’ end of the spectrum. They don’t have that sort of exorcist, futile-defender-of-fragile-reality sort of vibe. Warlock vibes tend to be more about bringing the horror here rather than holding it back.

Unless. See, GOOlocks, uniquely of all warlocks, have this line in their patron description: “The Great Old One might be unaware of your existence or entirely indifferent to you, but the secrets you have learned allow you to draw your magic from it.”

The Great Old One you draw your power from might be unaware of your existence. Unlike all other patrons, with whom you make an extremely conscious pact, the Great Old One doesn’t even need to know you exist. It’s an unknowable entity from realms that do not have to make anything resembling what we would view as sense, or sentience, or law, or reality. It might not even know you’re there. Or understand what something so small as you even is even if it did. So it doesn’t actually contradict for a warlock who is utterly opposed to the Far Realm to also be drawing power directly from said Far Realm. Well. Not on the Far Realm’s end, anyway. On the warlock’s … those who look into the abyss, and all that. Heh.

Now. Warlocks still don’t grant a lot of spells or abilities that give that ‘defender of reality’ vibe. But we could multiclass in a class that does.

Could have gone paladin here, or even cleric, but I’m not really looking for an overtly priestly kind of vibe. I do want more of an occultist. Something on the arcane end. And, well. The Clockwork Soul sorcerer is right there?

“The cosmic force of order has suffused you with magic. That power arises from Mechanus or a realm like it-a plane of existence shaped entirely by clockwork efficiency. […] Whatever its origin within you, the power of order can seem strange to others, but for you, it is part of a vast and glorious system.”

Order vs chaos. Wards against the night. Reality itself, that fragile skin of systems and rules, struggling to hold fast against the foaming tide of raw unmaking.

We’re going to start Clockwork Soul. At level one. We’re going to start out a creature of order and magic, a scholar dedicated to making the world continue to make sense. Balance the scales. Even out those dangerous snarls of fate and luck and chaos.

But one should always know one’s enemy, right? How can we face that which we cannot understand? So we read, and we researched, and when we chanced upon certain knowledge, when we opened certain windows of the mind in the process of this research, we …

Reached out. And touched.

And, now. The thing on the other side did not notice that touch. At least, it hasn’t given any indication that it has, or that it’s capable of noticing such things. And what it doesn’t know, unfortunately, probably cannot yet hurt it, but it also thus far hasn’t hurt us? So, you know. Knowledge is power? Surely it can’t hurt to explore a little more? The more we learn, the more we can stop. That makes sense, doesn’t it?

Let’s think about ratios, here. How much sorcerer, how much warlock. And the thing is, we want a good belt of both.

Half the reason I want warlock on an occultist build is that they give so many cool abilities. Particularly when it comes to invocations. I definitely want ‘Eyes of the Rune Keeper’. The ability to read all writing? On an occultist? Absolutely want that. But also GOOlocks get certain abilities. Pact of the Tome, for sure, and then the Book of Ancient Secrets invocation, because grimoires. ‘Thought Shield’, at level 10. You become inscrutable, your mind cannot be read, you gain resistance to psychic damage and can inflict it back on anyone who inflicts it on you. If we’re out here fighting eldritch beasties? So good.

But we also want a good chunk of sorcerer, because we do want that defender sort of vibe. Clockwork Soul gives us so many of the good spells. Lots of abjuration in there. Protection from Good and Evil, Dispel Magic, Lesser Restoration. And also, you know, the spell slots to use them.

Probably depends how far the campaign is going? But I think … I think we want just enough sorcerer to get a good range of lower level support and abjuration spells, and some spell slots, and some metamagic. But I do think we want to be mostly warlock. I like the level 10 GOOlock ability on an eldritch defender. And I like the theme of having looked into the abyss, and reached into the abyss, and carried the abyss all the way back into yourself, and never noticed that the abyss might, in fact, have looked back. Not in a way you understood, or even in a way that it understood either, but the effect was the same either way. In fighting it, chaos, unreason, the other, you have slowly and painstakingly grafted it into your own core.

I’m thinking sorcerer 6/warlock 14, should it go to level 20? But definitely trading back and forth evenly between them for the first 12 levels, then sliding off the slippery slope into full warlock towards the end of our development. No idea how that will effect power and playability, but sorlocks get some pretty nice tricks that can help them in combat even with only lower levelled spells to work with. It should be fine?

Not sure on race and background. Some stripe of elf would probably be good, just for Fey Ancestry, the advantage vs charm and sleep. If we’re going on a theme of mental defenses. Plus, it might also have added to the arrogance, a bit. Taking risks in the conviction that we are rational and ordered and defended enough for it not to affect or corrupt us. Heh. For background … I mean, I do always like the Haunted One background from Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft. It’s just cool and spooky. However, run-of-the-mill Sage probably would make more sense on this particular character. If we truly understood how dangerous it was out here, we probably would have been just that little bit more cautious about reaching blindly in the abyss? Well. One assumes, anyway.

I just. I do think they go interestingly together. Great Old One and Clockwork Soul. Thematically, you know? Order vs Chaos, Reason vs Unreason. There’s a nice arc there, just from the mixing of them. And there’s a lot of nice thematic spells and abilities to go with it.

I trace my footprints through the salt-warm, iron sea,

Specifically, as one might guess, a 1200ft range eldritch blast.

You start out warlock, and you take the Eldritch Spear invocation, which says thus: “When you cast eldritch blast, its range is 300ft.”

So now you have a cantrip with a 300ft base range.

Then you take the Spell Sniper feat, which says thus: “When you cast a spell that requires you to make an attack roll, the spell's range is doubled.”

So our 300ft eldritch blast is now a 600ft eldritch blast.

And then, with your sorcerer levels (or the metamagic adept feat, if you don’t want to multiclass), you take the Distant Spell metamagic, which says thus: “When you cast a spell that has a range of 5 feet or greater, you can spend 1 sorcery point to double the range of the spell.”

So you can spend 1 sorcery point per casting to turn your already 600ft eldritch blast into a 1200ft eldritch blast.

Now. Are there likely to be all that many situations where it’s useful to be able to shoot someone the bones of a quarter mile away? With a cantrip? Probably not. For a start, they might be getting slightly difficult to see at that range. This is more of a ‘cool once-off trick’ than a generally useful thing to sink multiple levels and at least one feat into.

But hey. That one time an enemy spellcaster is trying to escape using the fly spell, it’d be really damned funny to force a concentration check from 1200ft back, just to see if they get to stay in the air. Heh.

And the advantage of it being eldritch blast specifically is that eldritch blast generates multiple beams as it levels, instead of just doing more damage per beam, and each beam gets its own attack roll. So, like, even if we’re at disadvantage just for sheer range, once we get up to three or four beams, surely one of ‘em’s gotta hit?

And if you’re a sorlock with Quickened Spell as your other metamagic, you can also quicken a levelled spell to do something else actually useful on the same turn. In case anyone objects to you wasting turns trying to take potshots at the speck on the horizon.

Lady Ingrid Einfassen: grows nine feet tall, speaks thunderously, and summons a double-bladed axe as a ‘lady’s favour’

Aabria/Thaisha Lloy: Oh, I’ll marry her.

Right. Okay. Episode 27. Hal and Yanessa and Thaisha and the play. I’ve only caught up, and I’m having a meltdown right now. Oh, you bitch. You manipulative insidious bitch.

This scene:

Yanessa: We feel that when, ah. The play ends and Azgra is still dominant. Azgra wins, the revolution fails, the rebellion fails. And it feels like it’s going to be an extremely tragic or sombre or … unfortunate ending. We would love if, at the end, yes, Phokeon dies, but if he were to die and merge with a universal force, something that would show that his life, his rebellion, was not spent in vain. But rather that, in struggling and failing, his soul was actually redeemed and rewarded.

Hal: I am with you. I am with you. I think, I would like to suggest, that that is implied.

Yanessa: Let’s make it explicit! And further, I think there are some moments of comedy that just don’t hit in the first act. I think that there’s an element that we would like to bring as well of … Phokeon communicates a lot towards his people. He keeps bringing it back to the Rungjani. But of course there will be many in your audience who are not themselves Rungjani. Perhaps if there was something that he referred to that there was a spirit moving upon him. Something that he almost didn’t understand why he was doing what he was doing. That there was something communicating to him.

Hal, keeping it together, trying to bend it back away from where this is going: Yearning for freedom.

Yanessa: Yearning for redemption. Yearning for salvation.

Thaisha, livid: Redemption against what? Redemption from what?

Yanessa: We are all sinners.

Thaisha: Sure, but … is that the focus … Mm. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. (towards Hal) This is your play. And, ah. My people’s history. So you guys can keep … That’s fine.

I have never felt such a towering rage at what comes out of this woman’s mouth. Not even during the false resurrection. Because Thaisha has it bang on. Thaisha knows exactly what this is.

Yanessa, these edits, are flat-out trying to co-opt the Shaper’s War.

Okay. There are … In the short term she’s trying to stall opening night. That’s quite obvious. She’s so insistent. There’s a short term goal, and she probably doesn’t actually expect the edits to go through, even with a judicious helping of veiled threat. Hal came here with a Lloy. So Yanessa probably doesn’t actually expect these to go through. The main short-term goal is to delay the play. But. Even just her saying them.

And Kother’ai isn’t talking about the Shaper’s War directly. It’s a previous, failed rebellion against Azgra. Which. Dangerous in itself, given the Falconer’s rebellion and it’s sudden fresh relevance recently. It’s probably half the reason why she suddenly can’t let the play go ahead, in the wake of everything that’s happened this past week. Thjazi was killed on Tachonis orders, Halovar likely wasn’t planning for it. She may have originally intended to let the play happen, gain some good grace, but with the mood in the city shifting rapidly, she cannot let a play go ahead about a failed rebellion flinging hope for a successful one forward into the future. It’s got far too much resonance right now, she needs the inhabitants of Dol Makjar to not get a head of revolutionary fervour up in the current climate. Hence the sudden kibosh on the play and the insistence that it be delayed.

Delayed, or changed. Or, ideally, both.

But whether or not she expects these changes to be carried out, the sheer fact of her asking for them is …

It’s vile. It’s so vile. And so insidious.

… The orcs did not rebel for their own sakes. They didn’t decide to rebel at all. They were moved to it by a mysterious force. By a universal truth, perhaps, that predates the Shapers, to which the Shapers themselves were returned, to whom all souls belong. The Shapers were evil, obviously, and the Shaper’s War was obviously correct, but it wasn’t the orcs, the Rungjani, who were responsible for that rightness, it was something else. Some force. Some force that, conveniently, Yanessa herself has a direct line to, that resurrected her from the dead only last night.

No wonder Thaisha was internally clawing at the walls. Yanessa is straight up trying to co-opt the Shaper’s War, the history of Thaisha’s people, their greatest and most terrible sacrifice, into propping up Yanessa’s own fucking fake-ass religion.

Oh, I wanted to rip her face off. Congratulations to both Hal and Thaisha for holding that together, because I have never felt such fury towards this woman as I did this conversation. To even suggest that. To a Lloy. To two Rungjani.

Hal’s play is a celebration of the orcish people, their sacrifice, their suffering. To the rebellious spirit that was always there in them, the longing for freedom, the determination to not only escape slavery but destroy their slaver, to stand and fight even against gods themselves in that cause, no matter how often they failed, how often they suffered, how often they were slaughtered. Phokeon’s rebellion failed. But the one that came later? Did not. And now this play, in honour of that failed rebellion, that first and failed attempt at freedom, takes place on the god’s own ground. They honour that long ago sacrifice while standing on Azgra’s own blood.

And Yanessa fucking Halovar … wants to suggest that maybe that wasn’t the orcs themselves at all. They weren’t people, they didn’t stand up for themselves, they were tools. They were moved. By a mysterious force. As tools to end an obvious evil.

An evil that no one else in the world objected to until the orcs took the choice of inaction out of everyone’s hands.

This goddamn colonial missionary white saviour goddamn fucking bullshit. All wisdom, all truth, comes from white (or in this case human) religion. Native people could not act for their own good, much less the good of all, unless they were guided to it by a much more … truthful, powerful, mysterious force, that incidentally happens to speak only through white human mouths.

Oh, I want to rip her face off. And she so good at what she does. Look at the city right now. The Lloy wing, the history of the Lloys and the Rungjani and the Shapers War, vanished and in limbo at the Archenade. The Revolutionary Council itself under direct attack, from Yanessa’s own mouth. And now this. This direct attack on the histories and stories of the orcish people. This displacement of their stories inside their own damned city. ‘There will be many in your audience who will not be Rungjani themselves’. Oh, you bitch.

The Tachonis are fighting a war of magic and force. The Halovar are fighting a war of culture.

... Well, you know, when you put it like that? Sure. Why not.

Also, I'm mid-voyage right now, and the second I hit the Stormbones, we sighted a lifeberg, and I got my usual Monster Hunter option to ram it and claim a piece. And. I think, just this once, just while I'm currently rammed to the gunwales with high explosives, that maybe I might skip that option? Just this once? Heh.

I just. I really wish. I know why he’s a set menace on the academic islands. I know. I get it. But I really wish the challenge at the end, at ‘Orthos is Coming’ 10, was not luck based but dangerous based. Because I really, really, really want to just wait there calmly on that shore, with my crew of extremely dangerous pirates, wait for him to come smirking smugly off his ship, beeline for him, punch him in the face seven or eight times, total his crew, board his ship, steal his shit, come calmly back off, leisurely make my way back to my ship, and zail sweetly off into the great black yonder.

No, I don’t have strong feelings about this man, why do you ask?

I just. He’s so annoying. So annoying. He aggravates me so much. Goddamn pirate ‘academics’ stealing other people’s research and pawning it off as their own. Zailing around with his goddamn ‘Fleet of Truth’ like the cut-rate fucking pirate he is, acting like a big shot like I don’t also have my own dedicated dock cradle at the Mourn. At least out at zee the challenges are dangerous based and I can drub the shit out of him every time. Well. Assuming he’s actually with his fleet instead of hiding back in London. You’re a disgrace to academics and to pirates, you lazy arse!

And on top of all that, he’s a Summerset boy. Because of course he is.